HK autonomy bill points gun at UK, US banking giants
The US House’s passage of a bill sanctioning banks doing businesses with Chinese officials, the latest bluffing response to China’s implementation of the national security law for Hong Kong, is only a piece of waste paper, and the US knows deeply that it can achieve nothing in shaking China’s determination to push forward the law, Chinese analysts said.
The US House of Representatives passed the Hong Kong Autonomy Bill on Wednesday by unanimous consent, which would impose sanctions on foreign individuals and entities that materially contribute to China’s “failure to preserve Hong Kong’s autonomy,” and would allow the US president to impose property-blocking sanctions on an individual or entity, visa-blocking sanctions on a named individual and prohibit a financial institution from receiving loans from a US financial institution.
China firmly opposed the US House’s passage of the bill and urged the US to stop advancing the negative bill, otherwise, China will resolutely counter it, and the US should bear all the consequences, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Thursday’s routine press briefing.
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s national legislature, on Thursday voiced strong condemnation of and firm opposition to the passage of the bill, and said the US’ move has grossly interfered in China’s internal affairs. The US bill is merely “bluffing
rather than biting,” Chinese analysts said, with some comparing it to a piece of waste paper on the damage it could do to China.
It is likely that the US will first publish the list of Chinese officials whom they claimed are involved in the national security law legislation, and only banks which continue to do business with those officials afterward would be “fined,” Gao Lingyun, an expert at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times
An anonymous expert close to a central government agency predicted that less than 10 Chinese officials and entities may be put on the list, including prominent figures in pro-establishment camps in Hong Kong as well as senior officials from the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and officials from the newly established Office for Safeguarding National Security of the Central People’s Government in the HKSAR.
Also, executives of some Chinese mainlandbased financial institutions and state-owned enterprises may also be on the list, the expert noted.
Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that the US dares not to take concrete steps in sanctioning China, and the new bill and even their possible follow-up measures will only be a show to its domestic residents for the purpose of the presidential campaign.
Shen said if the US means what it said, it would have firmly revoked the special status of Hong Kong and withdrawn all of its firms from Hong Kong, but “it cannot even touch any of these.”
Foreign firms stuck in limbo
Mei Xinyun, an expert close to China’s Ministry of Commerce, told the Global Times that the US legislation could further sink the credibility of certain foreign financial institutions, in particular US ones.
“In light of the detention of Meng Wanzhou during which the London-headquartered bank HSBC played an important role in the relentless US crackdown on the Chinese tech company Huawei, we learn how financial institutions could serve as attack dogs for US government plots. So the legislation is more like raising the alert for the world to be careful in doing business with US banks,” Mei noted.
In June, HSBC announced mass layoffs of 35,000 jobs and froze almost all external hiring, after it was exposed to have had colluded with the US in its crackdown on Huawei that led to the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei’s chief financial officer.
Analysts said US and UK corporate giants, including HSBC, are caught in the crossfire between China and several Western nations on a wide range of issues and it is likely that they could be “in the fire” for a prolonged period, which dents their business prospects.
Britain just wants to save face and indulge itself in old imperial dreams of being the suzerainty over Hong Kong although it is fully aware that it cannot change anything, Shen said.
The international status of this old imperial country has declined so much that it has to use the global headline of Hong Kong affairs to prove its existence, and this is so ridiculous, Chinese analysts said.